MPs grilled education secretary Damian Hinds at the House of Commons this afternoon, alongside the children’s minister Nadhim Zahawi, the schools minister Nick Gibb, and the skills minister Anne Milton. Issues including T-levels, GCSEs and exclusions were on the agenda, as well as other topics such as the swimming curriculum. Here’s what we learned. 1.…

Fewer pupils have been entered for non-EBacc subjects this year, except in art and design which has bucked the decline and increased by two per cent. Official government figures released this morning also show entries to EBacc subjects have soared, especially in the sciences. A larger cohort of pupils means there are more overall GCSE entries…

Fewer people understand how GCSEs work since the new 9 to 1 grading system came in. The exams regulator Ofqual has published the results of its annual survey on perceptions of A-levels, GCSEs and other qualifications in England. The online study, conducted between October 24 and December 1 took opinions from almost 3,000 heads, teachers,…

Understanding of how GCSEs work dropped after the new 9 to 1 grading system came in. A survey of almost 3,000 heads, teachers, parents, universities and the public at large conducted between October 24 and December 1 last year found 62 per cent of respondents felt GCSEs are well understood by people, compared with 70 per…

A new rule requiring schools to seek permission from pupils before submitting their GCSE exams for re-marking is causing an “administrative burden” for leaders trying to challenge marking mistakes that affect a whole cohort. The rule change, announced last year, also means that GCSE exam papers submitted for re-marks from this summer are at risk…

The new maths GCSEs were designed to be different from the old A* to G GCSEs, says Cath Jadhav, so you really can’t compare new and old. Over the next two months we will be reporting on various aspects of summer 2017, including official statistics. Our very clear aim, in planning for the first new GCSEs…

The introduction of more rigorous GCSEs has understandably been challenging for teachers. But if they try to teach them in the same way as the old exams, they risk not only doing a disservice to their students but also short-changing themselves, argues Danuta Tomasz For the past two or three years secondary teachers in England…

The Department for Education this week published school-level data on GCSE and A-level results, including Progress 8 and Attainment 8 scores. Here, Schools Week looks at the winners and losers from this week’s data dump. A zero-sum game Because of the nature of Progress 8, the national score is designed to be zero. But schools…

The proportion of pupils entering the EBacc has dropped for the first time, new data shows, and experts claim the pressure for high Progress 8 scores is causing schools to avoid “risky” EBacc subjects. Whereas 39.7 per cent of pupils entered the EBacc last year, that proportion dropped by 1.5 percentage points to 39.7 per…

Exam boards are producing scripts for GCSEs and A-levels that rely on coloured diagrams to convey information to candidates, even though this will make the content inaccessible for colour-blind pupils. Colour vision deficiency (CVD) on average affects more than one child in every UK classroom – one in 12 boys and one in 200 girls…

The shift to a numeric scoring system for GCSEs is playing havoc with this year’s results, as Attainment 8 results drop and more schools fall below the Progress 8 floor standard. The number of schools that will fall below a Progress 8 score of -0.5 has grown by 30 per cent this year, while headline…